Image 1 used to reside on the corner of 4th and Scott
Image 2 is on the stairs of the Roebling Suspension Bridge
Image 3 was/is on the north side of the UpOver bar on Mainstrauss

Special Thanks to Jillian Kelly for these finds. Keep em coming.

We are always looking for cool and weird street art, so please send in to our Facebook page if you find any good stuff!

He based the idea off of terrariums, which are enclosed dry habitats or ecosystems on a smaller scale.  (Terrariums, aquariums, insectariums, and paludariums are all subcategories of what’s known as the vivarium, which in Latin literally means “place of life”.)

David actually began with regularly-sized light bulbs as stand-alone terrariums, and evolved to the jewelry pieces at some point.  You’ll be able to find some of his work through two “handmade” stores called Fabricate (in Northside) and the Brush Factory (in Oakley).  His personal design product series is called ( e i ) design, and he has also been involved in a couple of collaborations with friends under the names of RESproducts and Elna and Ei.  Along with the living jewelry, David has created pieces with wire, metal, stone, shell, leaf, seed, as well as his own natural-looking packaging for the products.  The following is a statement from his personal website:

“With reuse, repurposing, and restoration in mind, ( e i ) seeks to create works that embody simple, natural, and raw aesthetics. Inspiration and materials are sought from the natural world and antique, vintage, industrial sources.”

– www.davidnebert.com

Also check out his artsy blogs:  www.elnaandei.com, a collaboration with Milan DelVecchio, and eidesign.tumblr.com, a personal blog of photography, designs, and inspirations.

(Written by Rebecca Nebert)

I’ll be brief. A fringe festival is an arts festival focusing primarily on theater performances. They tend to be non-mainstream theater but historically, several major productions got their start at fringe. For example, the movie “The King’s Speech” has its roots in a fringe festival. It is called a fringe festival because the performances and spaces are thought to be on the fringes as compared to the main stream. Fringe festivals occur across the world and in many states inside the US.

May of 2005 was my first time at the Cincinnati Fringe Festival, and in 2006 I brought my camera and took some pictures of fake plastic trees (I’m a Radiohead fan). In 2007, they needed pictures taken for one of the shows and asked me. From there, I spring-boarded into taking pictures of everything I could point my camera at during the fringe festival and have since been made a festival staff member.

But what does any of that have to do with Make Cincinnati Weird? The Cincy Fringe Festival has been making Cincinnati a little weirder since it started. It has its roots in weirdness. One of the most memorable plays for me at a fringe was called “Ante’ Christ”, which was about gods playing cards over the rights to Armageddon. I saw a play called “wet dreams” which was a lot like a Cirque du Soleil performance. I’ve seen shows made out of dreams, given in classrooms and gymnasiums, taken tours of the underground tunnels (by the way, there are underground tunnels in Cincinnati), and of course seen some of the best karaoke performances ever at the nightly bar series. I’m serious, fringe karaoke is not like you’re used to — these people know how to put on a show.

The performance spaces change every year with a few local theaters participating. The whole festival is headquartered at the Know Theatre, 1120 Jackson Street. Many of the spaces are abandoned or unused buildings in historic Over the Rhine, but some have been very unique, such as one performance that occurred inside a moving city bus. The festival attracts performers and some audience members from across the country, and I have personally heard several traveling performers say Cincinnati was their favorite of the fringe festivals they have been to.

If you haven’t yet experienced a fringe festival show and a bar series after, you should come out May 31st to June 11th this year! For more information, check out the website cincyfringe.com, call 300-KNOW (5669), or stop by 1120 Jackson Street.

[Jeff B.]